Monday, August 25, 2025

Teachers' depression, anxiety and stress at three times the national norm: new study

University of New South Wales

Nine out of 10 Australian teachers are experiencing severe stress, and nearly 70% say their workload is unmanageable, says UNSW Sydney research.

A new study from researchers at UNSW Sydney – the first to examine rates of depression, anxiety and stress in Australian teachers – has found they experience these mental health issues at three times the national norm.

The study ‘Teachers’ workload, turnover intentions, and mental health’ published in Social Psychology of Education surveyed nearly 5000 primary and secondary school teachers across the country.

Researchers found that 90% of teachers reported moderate to extremely severe levels of stress, while more than two-thirds experienced moderate to extremely severe symptoms of depression and anxiety. The figures for depression and anxiety alone are more than double the national averages and point to a profession under immense pressure.

“This is not just a wellbeing issue – it’s a workforce issue,” said lead researcher Dr Helena Granziera, from the School of Education at UNSW’s Faculty of Arts, Design & Architecture. “Our findings show that teachers are experiencing mental health symptoms at rates far above the general population, and that these symptoms are closely linked to their workload and intentions to leave the profession.”

Using validated psychological measures (the DASS test), the study revealed that teachers’ average scores for depression, anxiety, and stress were in the “extremely severe” range. Compared to national norms, teachers scored three times higher for depression and nearly four times higher for stress.

Causes of mental health issues

The research also found that workload manageability was a key factor influencing teachers’ mental health. Teachers who reported their workload as unmanageable were significantly more likely to experience depressive symptoms, which in turn were strongly associated with their intentions to leave the profession. Notably, 68.8% of teachers described their workload as largely or completely unmanageable.

“Teachers are telling us they’re overwhelmed – not by teaching itself, but by the growing burden of non-core tasks,” said Dr Granziera. “Administrative duties, compliance requirements, and excessive data collection are taking time away from lesson planning and student engagement. This is leading to burnout and a sense of professional disillusionment.”

Impact on education

The study’s findings come at a time when Australia is facing a critical teacher shortage. According to recent data from the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, up to 30% of teachers are considering leaving the profession before retirement age. The results shown in the paper add new urgency to these concerns, showing that poor mental health – particularly depression – is a significant predictor of turnover intentions.

“This research provides clear evidence that improving teachers’ working conditions is not just beneficial – it’s essential,” said Dr Granziera. “If we want to retain skilled educators and ensure quality education for all students, we must address the root causes of teacher stress and mental health decline.”

The study also highlighted disparities based on location, with teachers in rural and remote areas reporting higher levels of depressive symptoms. Female teachers were also more likely to report depressive symptoms and turnover intentions, reflecting broader trends in occupational mental health.

What needs to change

In response to these findings, the research team is calling for a multi-pronged approach to support teacher wellbeing, including:

Policy reforms to reduce non-essential workload and streamline administrative processes
School-level monitoring of teacher wellbeing and workload
Investment in digital mental health programs tailored for educators, allowing flexible, self-paced support
System-wide interventions to support teacher retention and reduce burnout.

The study took place between October 2022 and May 2024, with recruitment via the Black Dog Institute website and social media channels using targeted social media outreach and teacher-specific platforms.

“This is one of the largest and most comprehensive studies of teacher mental health in Australia,” said Dr Granziera. “It provides a clear and urgent message: our teachers are struggling, and they need support.”

The implications of these findings extend beyond the classroom. Poor teacher mental health has been linked to lower student achievement, reduced classroom quality, and diminished student wellbeing.

“Teachers’ mental health is intricately related to students’ outcomes, both in terms of students’ mental health themselves, but also students’ academic achievement,” says Dr Granziera.

“It’s clear improving teacher wellbeing should be a priority of policy makers not just for teachers but for our education system as a whole.”

Journal

Social Psychology of Education

DOI

10.1007/s11218-025-10113-w

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Teachers’ workload, turnover intentions, and mental health: perspectives of Australian teachers

Article Publication Date

29-Jul-2025

COI Statement

Authors 1 and 2 are on the editorial board of Social Psychology of Education. The other authors had no conflicts of interest.

JUNO completed liquid filling and begins data taking

Chinese Academy of Sciences Headquarters

image:
The JUNO detector seen from outside.
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Credit: JUNO Collaboration

The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) has successfully completed filling its 20,000-tons liquid scintillator detector and begun data taking on Aug. 26. After more than a decade of preparation and construction, JUNO is the first of a new generation of very large neutrino experiments to reach this stage. Initial trial operation and data taking show that key performance indicators met or exceeded design expectations, enabling JUNO to tackle one of this decade’s major open questions in particle physics: the ordering of neutrino masses—whether the third mass state (ν₃) is heavier than the second (ν₂).

Prof. WANG Yifang, a researcher at the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and JUNO spokesperson, said: “Completing the filling of the JUNO detector and starting data taking marks a historic milestone. For the first time, we have in operation a detector of this scale and precision dedicated to neutrinos. JUNO will allow us to answer fundamental questions about the nature of matter and the universe.”

Located 700 meters underground near Jiangmen city in the Guangdong Province, JUNO detects antineutrinos produced 53 kilometers away by the Taishan and Yangjiang nuclear power plants and measures their energy spectrum with record precision. Unlike other approaches, JUNO’s determination of the mass ordering is independent of matter effects in the Earth and largely free of parameter degeneracies. JUNO will also deliver order‑of‑magnitude improvements in the precision of several neutrino‑oscillation parameters and enable cutting‑edge studies of neutrinos from the Sun, supernovae, the atmosphere, and the Earth. It will also open new windows to explore unknown physics, including searches for sterile neutrinos and proton decay.

Proposed in 2008 and approved by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Guangdong Province in 2013, JUNO began underground construction in 2015. Detector installation started in December 2021 and was completed in December 2024, followed by a phased filling campaign. Within 45 days, the team filled 60,000 tons of ultra‑pure water, keeping the liquid‑level difference between the inner and outer acrylic spheres within centimeters and maintaining a flow‑rate uncertainty below 0.5%, safeguarding structural integrity. Over the next six months, 20,000 tons of liquid scintillator were filled into the 35.4-meter‑diameter acrylic sphere while displacing the water. Throughout, stringent requirements on ultra‑high purity, optical transparency, and extremely low radioactivity were achieved. In parallel, the collaboration conducted detector debugging, commissioning, and optimization, enabling a seamless transition to full operations at the completion of filling.

At the heart of JUNO is a central liquid‑scintillator detector with an unprecedentedly large effective mass of 20,000 tons, housed at the center of a 44-meter-deep water pool. A 41.1-meter‑diameter stainless steel truss supports the 35.4-meter acrylic sphere, the scintillator, 20,000 20-inch photomultiplier tubes (PMTs), 25,600 3-inch PMTs, front‑end electronics, cabling, anti-magnetic compensation coils, and optical panels. All PMTs operate simultaneously to capture scintillation light from neutrino interactions and convert it to electrical signals.

Prof. MA Xiaoyan, JUNO Chief Engineer, remarked: “Building JUNO has been a journey of extraordinary challenges. It demanded not only new ideas and technologies, but also years of careful planning, testing, and perseverance. Meeting the stringent requirements of purity, stability, and safety called for the dedication of hundreds of engineers and technicians. Their teamwork and integrity turned a bold design into a functioning detector, ready now to open a new window on the neutrino world.”

JUNO is hosted by the IHEP and involves more than 700 researchers from 74 institutions across 17 countries and regions. “The landmark achievement that we announce today is also a result of the fruitful international cooperation ensured by many research groups outside China, bringing to JUNO their expertise from previous liquid scintillator set-ups. The worldwide liquid scintillator community has pushed the technology to its ultimate frontier, opening the path towards the ambitious physics goals of the experiment”, commented Prof. Gioacchino Ranucci, Deputy spokesperson of JUNO and a Professor at the University of Milano and INFN-Milano.

JUNO is designed for a scientific lifetime of up to 30 years, with a credible upgrade path toward a world‑leading search for neutrinoless double‑beta decay. Such an upgrade would probe the absolute neutrino mass scale and test whether neutrinos are Majorana particles, addressing fundamental questions spanning particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology, and profoundly shaping our understanding of the universe.

The central acrylic sphere and PMTs.

Top tracker above the water pool.

Prompt signal of a reactor neutrino event detected on August 24, with energy of ~5.7MeV.

Delayed signal of a reactor neutrino event detected on August 24, with energy of ~2.2MeV.

Credit

JUNO Collaboration

Unicellular cyanobacterium UCYN-B significantly contributes to global oceanic nitrogen fixation

Science China Press

UCYN-B dominant regions with potential high N2 fixation rates — image:
The delineated areas represent regions with total *nifH* gene abundance higher than 108 copies m-2. Red, green, orange and purple denote regions dominated (defined as > 75% of the total *nifH* gene abundance) by UCYN-B, *Trichodesmium*, UCYN-A and *Richelia*, respectively. The blue shaded-areas denote regions predicted to have N2 fixation rates > 100 μmol N m-2 d-1
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Credit: ©Ruotong Jiang, Haizheng Hong and Dalin Shi

A research team led by Professor Dalin Shi at the State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, Xiamen University, together with collaborators from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, reports that the cyanobacterium UCYN-B plays an important role in marie nitrogen (N2) fixation. The team shows that UCYN-B drives high N2 fixation rates in previously unrecognized hotspots accross the global ocean, making a significant contribution to the ocean’s nitrogen supply and productivity. The study draws on extensive field surveys that combined stable isotope tracing, high-throughput sequencing, quantitative PCR (qPCR), and advanced statistical modeling.

Since the industrial revolution, the ocean has absorbed about 30% of human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2). A key process behind this carbon storage is the biological carbon pump, which depends on phytoplankton photosynthesis. However, more than half of the ocean’s primary production is limited by the shortage of fixed nitrogen. Diazotrophs, microorganisms capable of converting atmospheric N2 into bioavailable nitrogen, are therefore essential in nutrient-poor regions and play a critical role in climate regulation. Yet direct in situ measurements of N2 fixation remain scarce, limiting accurate estimates of its global flux and its links to the carbon cycle.

The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre (NPSG), the largest contiguous ecosystem on Earth and a major oceanic sink of atmospheric CO2, is often described as an “ocean desert” due to extremely low nutrient levels. In this region, biological N2 fixation is an important nitrogen source supporting productivity. While most previous work focused on Station ALOHA in the central North Pacific, little was known about other parts of the vast gyre. Limited observations have suggested substantial spatial variability in N2 fixation rates and diazotrophs community structure, leaving a gap that could affect global N2 fixation estimates and, in turn, predictions of ocean carbon storage.

UCYN-B dominates nitrogen fixation in the western North Pacific

Professor Shi’s team conducted large-scale, high-resolution surveys in the western North Pacific and found that UCYN-B dominates the diazotroph community there. Depth-integrated N2 fixation rates ranged from 199 to 821 μmol N m-2 d-1 in summer, comparable to other known global hotspots. Quantitative analyses, including size-fractionated N2 fixation rate measurements, nifH gene sequencing, metagenomics, and qPCR, show that UCYN-B accounted for 67–99% of the diazotroph population at stations with high N2 fixation rates and was estimated to contribute about 90% of total N2 fixation in the study region.

Ecological niche and global distribution of UCYN-B

By combining global genetic dataset with environmental data from Earth system models, the team characterized the ecological niche of UCYN-B using generalized additive models (GAMs). Results show that UCYN-B thrives in warm, nutrient-poor waters, tolerates low dissolved iron, and depends on phosphorus availability. Simulations indicate that UCYN-B is not only abundant in the western North Pacific but also widespread in other (sub)tropical oligotrophic oceans, including the western South Pacific, western Indian Ocean, and South Atlantic.

A significant contributor to global oceanic N2 fixation

The study provides the first quantitative global assessment of UCYN-B’s contribution to oceanic N2 fixation. Key findings include: (1) Regional role: UCYN-B contributes 5.2–7.2 Tg N yr-1 of N2 fixation in the western North Pacific; (2) Global impact: UCYN-B-dominated regions collectively contribute 10.8–15.0 Tg N yr-1, about 20% of the global oceanic N2 fixation flux; (3) Indian Ocean hotspot: UCYN-B accounts for 3.4–4.8 Tg N yr-1 in the Indian Ocean, nearly ten times higher than earlier estimates, and represents 45-52% of the region’s N2 fixation. These results highlight the significant role of UCYN-B in the marine nitrogen fixation and expose limitations in earlier modeling approaches.

This work shows that UCYN-B is a dominant driver of biological N2 fixation at basin and global scales. It provides, for the first time, predictive maps and quantitative estimates of N2 fixation in UCYN-B dominated regions. The findings indicate that UCYN-B’s role has been substantially underestimated in current models, leading to gaps in understanding global nitrogen and carbon cycles. By clarifying the environmental controls on diazotrophic cyanobacteria and simulating their global distribution, this study offers a stronger basis for predicting how marine N2 fixation, and by extention, the oceanic carbon sink may respond to climate change.